The sorting of small agricultural, manufactured and/or produced objects such as seeds, pharmaceutical tablets or capsules, small electrical components, ball bearing, small food products, etc., can be cumbersome, painstakingly tedious, and wrought with human error.
For example, in seed breeding, large numbers of seeds are sampled and analyzed to determine whether the seeds possess a particular genotype or traits of interest. Various known systems, devices, tools, and machinery are commonly used to sample a large number of seeds by removing a small portion of each seed, while leaving the remaining seed viable for planting. The removed portions, or chips, and the corresponding ‘donor’ seeds are then cataloged to track the seeds and the respective corresponding samples. Each sample is then analyzed to identify various attributes of the respective sample and donor seed, such as DNA characteristics and/or traits.
After the seeds are sampled and the samples have been analyzed, the seeds are individually sorted according to attributes of each respective seed. Typically, the sorting process is painstakingly performed by hand, which is extremely time consuming and subject to human error.